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The 2017 Rio Roosevelt tour was a wonderful time, with a highly congenial bunch of us, and produced loads of fabulous sightings of Amazonian birds, common and rarities alike. It’s hard to imagine doing a two-week tour in Amazonia without a drop of rain – even in the dry season -- but that’s what we experienced this year, as both of the main regions we visit, forests and cerrados west of the Rio Madeira in Rondonia and Amazonas states, and the middle Rio Roosevelt/Madeirinha of southern Amazonas, were very dry indeed. Although it had rained pretty hard about a week ahead of the trip, the dry season really seemed to have set in, and birds were very quiet and only weakly responsive to recording playback and my whistled imitations, making it especially hard to find any number of fairly common species. Those that did make a sound, however, were duly registered and usually seen well by all, with a few (frustrating!) exceptions (see below). Flowers were almost nonexistent in the forest, and hummers were correspondingly scarce. Raptors, too, were few and far between (and none of the big guys put in an appearance), although we scanned the heavens and riverbanks quite efficiently every day, I thought; I really can't imagine what was going on with that.

As always, the tour opened with birding on the west side of the Madeira, where there are many species not present on the Roosevelt. The Humaita area was very good to us, highlighted by a truly fabulous Ocellated Crake that showed perfectly about 10 times in just a couple of minutes, followed immediately by great looks at a Russet-crowned Crake, and then an Azure Gallinule. Fine stuff! Other specialties of the isolated grasslands in that region included Toco Toucan, White-eared Puffbird, Rusty-backed Antwren, Cinereous-breasted Spinetail, Sharp-tailed Tyrant, Black-masked Finch, Tawny-bellied and Dark-throated seedeaters, and a host of open-country flycatchers. Forested tracks yielded Amazonian Pygmy-Owl, Bluish-fronted Jacamar, Gilded Barbet, Brown-banded Puffbird, Western Striolated-Puffbird, Curl-crested Aracari, Golden-collared Toucanet, Bar-breasted Piculet, great views of the recently described Predicted Antwren, Peruvian Warbling-Antbird, an as-yet-undescribed species of tody-tyrant (sister to Snethlage’s T-t), exceptional views of White-browed Purpletuft, Para (Inambari) Gnatcatcher, and Paradise and Red-billed Pied tanagers. Least Nighthawks put on a good show, and a fabulous male Spot-tailed Nightjar sat still as we walked right up to it.

I called an impromptu stop on a sideroad going through what looked to be pretty extensive forest on Google Earth. I’d never taken time to check it out, but I’m glad we did this time, because I heard a Fulvous-chinned Nunlet a couple of minutes into our first stop. I hadn’t seen it since 1997, I think, and I doubt that we’ve ever had it on a FG tour – so that was very cool! It’s probably all over the place out there -- haha. Then, a couple of hours later, after no luck with Campina Jays and a couple of other birds, I called another stop where there was some decent jay habitat fairly close to the road… and heard the bird calling before we even got the doors open. Great feeling! But the darned things (at least four, from the racket they made) refused to show for more than a few seconds, and only a couple of us managed to get on to them, even with playback that usually brings ‘em flying in. Frustrated, we worked our way through a fence and out into the woodland, but the birds had completely vanished, and that was that. Bummer!

I’d been told (the day before the tour started) that our group would need to be at the airport by 06:30 for the charter out to the Rio Roosevelt. They lied. There had been a booking foul-up of some sort, and our plane was out on a mail run, so we had to wait for it to get back to Porto Velho, which was expected to be nearly four hours. Finally, we boarded the charter and had a wonderful flight! It is so exciting to see the disturbed areas around Porto Velho give way, over the next hour, to virgin rainforest and wild, unexplored enclaves of campinas and cerrado, then to suddenly feel the plane start to descend over that vast, verdant canopy. Moments later, we were cutting wide arcs over the Roosevelt and Santa Rita rapids, to give folks on both sides of the plane an ideal view of the pristine forest and rivers below, cruising in to the dirt airstrip to land with three hard bumps(!) before pulling up the spot where we would step out onto terra firme, above the banks of the The River of Doubt. It was fantastic!

Soon after meeting with our local guides of many years, I learned that the pousada’s main communal building, including the kitchen and dining room, had burned to the ground in Sept 2016. I had heard not a word about that, and I guess it was not divulged onto Facebook or other platforms. This meant that the lumber that was to be used for construction of a new tower, the site for which I had picked out on the 2016 tour, had been used to reconstruct the pousada. Worse, the old tower had been disabled, as the guy-wiring had been removed for use on the new tower, which was several weeks away from completion. Thus, we fell into a gap with no tower (which beats falling into a gap from a tower). I felt awful having to tell the group about this, and I felt very bad that I’d not been told about these things by the pousada folks well ahead of the tour (they probably feared we’d cancel). Fortunately, over the course of the week, we managed to see from the ground most of the birds we’d have most counted on from the tower.

No doubt about it, the birding highlight on the Rio Roosevelt was the Nocturnal Curassow we finally saw on the penultimate day of the tour. I say “finally” because we tried hard for it on our second day at the Roosevelt, hearing it well, but not quite getting to see the bird. To go for it, we had to leave the pousada at 02:30 to be in the forest shortly after moonrise on those mornings (waning moon). On the early morning of 20 June, we mounted a second offensive, and the whole group participated, which was cool. Amazingly, once we made it back into the forest, near the calling bird, it took us less than half an hour to spot it, sitting about 60 feet above ground. That is the kind of birding experience one absolutely will never forget! Then, discovering that we had been standing for 10 minutes in a bivouac of army ants, as the ants climbed our legs (and everything else) in the disorienting darkness, firmly cemented the memory for all of us!

We also enjoyed scope views of Rufous Potoo (lucked out with a real easy one this year), super views of Pavonine Cuckoo and rarely seen Natterer’s Striolated-Puffbird, a stunning Blue-cheeked Jacamar to go with the Yellow-billed’s we’d seen near Humaitá, Black-girdled Barbets, Golden-green, Ringed, and Red-necked woodpeckers, fantastic Kawall’s Parrots, a bunch of beautiful Orange-cheeked Parrots and Crimson-bellied Parakeets in the same couple of trees, and a sneaky male Pavonine Quetzal that finally allowed us to appreciate it through the scope. Among a lengthy roster of ant-things, outstanding were Pearly Antshrike, Roosevelt Stipple-throated Antwren (name soon to be changed to Rio Roosevelt Stipplethroat; all Epinecrophylla will become “stipplethroats”), amazingly close views of Aripuana Antwren and Manicore Warbling-Antbird, both described new to science only in 2013, a good Ferruginous-backed Antbird, and a pair of endemic White-breasted Antbirds at a big army ant swarm. We’ve had poor luck with Pale-faced Bare-eye the past few tours, but I pulled a pair in close this year – they just didn’t show very well for most folks, which was a shame. We had excellent views of Rusty-belted Tapaculo and Chestnut-belted Gnateater, but Black-bellied continues to be very difficult, now that the two territories that were “easy” up to about 2013 have dried up. Hoffmann’s, Uniform, and Rondonia woodcreepers were all seen well. Some tricky little tyrannids put on very nice shows: Buff-cheeked Tody-Flycatcher (really a tody-tyrant), Zimmer’s Tody-Tyrant (best view I’ve ever had), and the newly described (2013) Chico’s Tyrannulet, which teased us for quite a while, but finally popped into view very nicely for all. A flashy male Snow-capped Manakin was tops in that department. Weirdly, very weirdly, we did not even HEAR Black-girdled Barbet or Red-necked Aracari, and barely managed a heard-only Tooth-billed Wren a couple of times. Part of that was due to the lack of the tower. It was just bad luck that we missed Dark-winged Trumpeter this year, and Zigzag Heron remained dead-silent, being out-of-phase with the breeding season in this area.

I thought mammals sightings, while certainly not bad, were a bit sub-par this time. We saw only one Brazilian Tapir, and it slipped away before all could see it very well. Common Woolly Monkey showed up better than it has for a couple of years, but we had just one brief encounter with White-nosed Bearded Sakis, and no Giant Otters this year. On the other hand, we enjoyed excellent views of Red-chested Moustached Tamarin and Saddle-backed Tamarin, and also a possibly undescribed form of titi-monkey (Callicebus) on the west side of the Madeira, which was better than we usually do there. I’ll drop into the triplist some video of these and others of our sightings, with thanks, too, to Valerie Gebert for contributing something like 180(!) photos from the tour.

I tremendously enjoyed birding with all of you, and very much look forward to our next meetings, wherever they happen to be! It was a great privilege to once again run the rapids and walk the trails in this remote and pristine sector of the Amazon basin.

KEYS FOR THIS LIST
One of the following keys may be shown in brackets for individual species as appropriate: * = heard only, I = introduced, E = endemic, N = nesting, a = austral migrant, b = boreal migrant

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

The most noteworthy other animals included the Little Brown Bats (Myotis nigrescens) that accompanied us along wider trails every late afternoon; the enormous Black Caiman (two) that glided ominously up to our boats (looking for a handout, or a hand out); several very large Green Iguanas; lots of beautiful butterflies including several species of morphos; and some huge Bullet Ants (Peraponera sp.), and both species of army ants (Eciton and Labidus), sometimes closer than we'd have liked!

Totals for the tour: 386 bird taxa and 20 mammal taxa